回复：【长篇阅读】公子的传记

Being in medical school almost daily, wholly without association or companionship of other children, he attempted to learn Latin by himself. Unable to distinguish between English and self-taught garbled Latin, he became a stammer. It reached a point where he couldnot communicate at all, making him withdraw into himself.
Ruth was improving physically but she became totally emotionally immersed in her affliction, using it finally as her identity before the world.
She rather enjoyed being pampered and took great satisfaction in pity. She “held court” at her home while her friends waited on her and praised her bravery during her pregnancy. Few women, they told her, would have sacrificed their lives for the sake of having a child.
She ruled everyone—her tactic being, “If you won’t let me have my way, I’ll get even for always—I’ll die.” And she used this threat with Andrew to excess. Her frailty was her greatest strength.

Being with children his own age was difficult for a time because he was unable to communicate even on their level. However, the patience that Anton had with the boy resulted in Arlington’s chattering like the other youngsters—and he forgot his Latin.
When five-year-old Arlington returned home, his father had gone into private practice and the story of Mrs.Brugh’s remarkable recovery swept throughout the small towns of southeastern Nebraska. Success came relatively quickly and easily for Dr. Brugh, for here was a grain merchant who had become a physician late in life and healed his own wife.
The family moved to the “big city” of Beatrice, Nebraska,when Arly was six. (“I really thought it was a metropolis,” Taylor recalled, “all of 9000 people!”)
They rented the first floor of a little house on High Street.Their landlady, “Auntie Neuhauser,” occupied the upstairs which consisted of a bedroom and kitchenette. There was one staircase and only one bathroom which served everyone. Mrs. Neuhauser was very exacting about cleanliness, which speaks well for the tidiness of the Brugh family,

Aunties’s pancakes were a favorite of Arly’s and he was often invited to have breakfast in the little kitchenette on the second floor.
Ruth did not believe in formal education for children at an early age and refused to send her son to school. Since the doctor was practicing day and night, she directed all her attention and love to her boy, who looked more like a little girl because of the way she combed his curly hair and fussed over his clothing. If he was permitted to go out and playwith other children, he was told to keep his pretty white shirt free from dirtand grass stains. Mother and son spent their days reading together, having hot lunches and taking walks.
The doctor was very strict with Arly and if his son did not eat what was put before him he was sent to bed hungry. Because the doctor did not approve of the “temper tantrums” that Arly displayed occasionally, he did not spare the rod! Ruth, of course, did not like this form of discipline, but would not defy her husband and said later it was just aswell, she could have spoiled her son had it not been for the strong hand of his father.
Dr. Brugh, who called his son “ Buddy,”very often took the boy on house calls with him. The child witnessed everything from childbirth to death and he knew the smells of disease and saw the pains of amputation, but he adored his father and said he was going to be a surgeon,too. (As Robert Taylor he portrayed a doctor in five films and in 1935 his rolein Society Doctor gave him the big push toward stardom.)
Ruth took “her baby” to school when he was seven years old and she cried all the way home. She felt she had lost him and wept, “I’ve lost my son!” clinging to him tighter than ever. She dressed him up in a little Lord Fauntleroy velvet outfit. Who suffered most that day is questionable.

Arly was chased home by his classmates because he looked so cute.The boys desperately wanted to see the velvet knickers covered with mud. This daily routine encouraged Mrs.Brugh’s little boy to become the fastest runner in town! (His rosy cheeks didn’t help the situation.) Being chased home from school became a game and the other boys discovered that Arly was having as much fun as they were.
As for girls, Taylor said he fell in love only once in his youth. She was the daughter of the physical director of the YMCA: “Guess she was pretty, but I don’t remember.What intrigued me about her was that she could run faster than I could and we spent our entire ‘brief courtship’ trying to outrun each other. The day I finally caught up with her I lost interest.”
A few friends called him “Doc” because he talked so much about becoming a doctor. If that didn’t work out, he said he would be a cowboy “because I love to ride horses and to hunt,” the latter being a characteristic he and his father did not have in common.
He was allowed to have a horse that he kept at the Tyser’s farm a mile or so out of town. Riding “Gyp”—short for Gypsy—was one of his greatest pleasures.

Chapter Ⅱ
At grammar school, the superintendent, whowas also the leader of the school orchestra, persuaded Arly to take up thecello rather than the saxophone which he had been attemp-ting. It was a reliefto the Brughs when he took this advice because Ruth dreaded the noise of thesaxophone and the “plunk of the banjo.” Several students got together andformed a quartet. Arly took the cello seriously even though it was the objectof some snickering.
In junior high school he became the first “elected”president of the student body, and in a letter written late in his life to apal in Beatrice he said, “I shall never forget the fears that overcame me everytime I had to preside over a meeting in that auditorium or introduce a guestspeaker. Nothing else has ever frightened me so much.”
He remained somewhat aloof—quiet, studiousmusical, handsome and quite a clothes horse. He was just not one of the crowd, possessing interests other than those of his class-mates.
Arly was a member of the track team butsaid he was a faster runner when he wore knickers. On vacations he stockedwheat and mowed lawns.

When the doctor’s financial condition improved—he was now an osteopath—the Brughs bought a brownish brick home at 901 North 6th Street. His neighbors described Arly as a fine-looking young man, always well groomed and smiling.He especially enjoyed Mr. and Mrs. Clayton, the elderly retired farmers who lived next door, and considered them as close as his own grandparents who lived in Filley where he was born.
The Claytons were story-tellers, mainly relating tales of their early life in Nebraska,and Arly said he couldn’t wait until he would be old like they were and have “lots of stories to tell.”
Arly’s closest friend was Gerhart Wiebe, a member of the staring quartet and the son of a very respectable family o f Menonites. The Wiebe family had always been well-to-do, but suffered a severe financial disaster. Arly stuck by his friend through this tragic time and inhis quiet way let it be known that just because his buddy’s family had losttheir fortune, his esteem for Gerhart had not diminished. Arly and Gerhart shared the same interests: they belonged to the same high school organizations and both maintained high scholastic and moral standards. Gerhart Weibe went to become a dean at the University of Boston.

Even as he grew up Ruth continued her strict dominance over her son, and because she was still a frail woman, he obeyed her without question. The doctor did not allow cross words to be uttered in her presence and insisted Arly help her as much as possible. In fact, he did more than his share of housework and cooking.
With this background he learned gentleness with women, treating each and every one as if she were his mother, weak,delicate and helpless; and later he was attracted to the motherly type of woman.
Except for his few close friends and neighbors, he was not sociable with the “party crowd,” and rarely dated. Ruth would have objected anyway and he knew it.
Arly defied her for the first time when heappeared in the Dramatic Club Play, Nothing But The Truth, as the male lead, Mr. Ralston. He pacified his mother by continuing his cello lessons and joined the orchestra.

Always embarrassed about singing, he joined the Glee Club anyway, but his talent was most exceptional on the debating team.The Brughs’ tongue-tied child had emerged into a brilliant speaker. He won the State Oratorical Championship for his speech, “The Peculiar Position Held by School Teacher in Pubic Society, ” and was awarded with a ten-day jaunt to Detroit.
He did not want to enter the contest because of the stiff competition. There were three ministers of the Gospel already enrolled and he told his parents, “I won’t have a chance,” but they encouraged him with the promise of a fur coat, the current rage. (“It was like raccoon but it wasn’t real. It was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. I’ll never forget it!”)
Ruth was prouder when Arly won a local musical contest playing “The Swan” on his cello. She told him she was sure hewould be a famous performer one day. “Na! I’d rather take over Dad’s practice right here in Nebraska!”

When he graduated from high school,underneath the 1929 Homesteader’s Year Book picture of S. Arlington Brugh, it read –FEW THINGS ARE IMPOSSIBLETO DILIGENCE AND PERSEVERENCE, and his credits listed were Dramatic Club, Glee Club, National Honor Society, Orchestra, Student Council, Homesteader Staff and Senior Social Chairman. As a member of the Senior High Operetta, Captain Crossbones,he is pictured in a sweater under his suit, while in the Dramatic Club Play photo he is the only one without ajacket: “The Dramatic Club Play, entitled Nothing But The Truth, was staged with great success. It was pronounced to be one of the finest productions ever rendered by a Beatrice High School organization.” This was to be Taylor’sfirst review.
In the Honor Society picture he is in the front row center, wearing his school sweater: “In election to this society, the faculty honors its members for the attainments already made and for the promisethey contain of continued excellence in the ideals of the school—schol-arship, leadership, character an service.”
As a graduation present, Arly was given an old car. He had been hitching rides to Crete, Nebraska, every week to take his cello lessons from Professor E. Gray, an instructor at Doane University, forty miles from Beatrice.

Arly had great admiration for the professor(“He was my inspiration”) and because of him he enrolled at Doane. He suddenly gave up the idea of following in his father’s footsteps as a doctor and decided to dedicate himself to the cello and become a concert performer.
To help pay college expenses he played in astring quartet with his pal Gerhart Weibe, with Herbert Jackson, who went on to become a dentist in Beatrice, and Don Abbott, later to teach music at Loyola University and dying a young man. The group performed over radio station KMNJ, earning forty to fifty dollars for each appearance. Arly continued to stock wheat during the harvest season, worked in gas station part-time and painted cars for fun-money.
During Arly’s sophomore year, Professor Gray announced that he was going to accept a better position at Pomona College in Claremont, California. This was a blow to young Brugh and at the age of twenty made the most important decision of his life—to follow the professor.
Ruth was opposed, but she wanted more than anything for her son to continue his ambition to be a cellist. It was she who convinced the doctor to let their son leave home.
On the long trip to California, he maintained a speed of thirty-five miles an hour—a promise he had made to his father when he got the car.
He had driven about one hundred miles when he stopped to telephone home. Ruth, who was still in tears after the front lawn farewell, put the doctor on. He listened for a moment then shouted, “All right,make it forty miles an hour!”

MGM, in its many biographical releases about Taylor,said he replied, “O.K., Pops, see you in the movies!” Actually, he never gave it a thought, except for the weekly family outing on Saturday nights to see a picture show. And it is doubtful Arly would call Dr. Brugh “Pops.”
At Pomona,the professor begrudged his protégé all outside activities save his academic work and the lessons on his cello. But Arly’s public speaking became so polished he again was asked to join the Drama Club.
Not wanting to offend Gray, he declined,but despite the extensive music lessons, debating, tennis, orchestra and regular studies, he wanted to cram in still another activity and it narrowed down to the Glee Club or Drama.
Taylor said he cannot remember how he came to his decision, but the MGM Publicity Department insisted that it was an interesting story that put him on the stage.
According to them, he was taking a walk on the campus when he came across a cricket and a spider. A silly notion struck him and he drew a line with the heel of his shoe.
If the spider crossed the line first, he would join the Glee Club, but if the cricket won, he would choose Dramatics.
The cricket won and Professor Gray was livid! “A concert performer is an artist. The public expects you to give total dedication to your art. A cellist is a musician, not an actor. The only thing Dramatics can possibly do is take time away from your practice, and your mind away from your total dedication. Dramatics! What a waste of time!”

Dr. Brugh received a letter from his son saying that he was confused: “At one time I wanted to study medicine, but I know how much you and Mother want me to master the cello. Yet I cannot deny mylove for the excitement of debate and acting. What do you consider the most important subject in the world?”
His father’s reply came scribbled on a prescription slip: “Human Nature.”
Arlington continued to play in the college orchestra but gave up his cello lessons.
His Phi Delta Theta fraternity brothers tried to fix him up with many girls but he seemed more interested in his school work than socializing. One of them said, “Every dame in town wanted to go out with Brugh but he turned them all down. He did show up at a few dances but always alone.”

The college crowd at Pomona danced to jazz and be-bop music butArly had mastered only the waltz and wasn’t too impressed with the gyrating,wild steps of the jitterbug.
“What’s the matter, Brugh? Why aren’t you dancing?” a buddy inqured.
“Hell, this is all new to me. I’m still trying to figure out the fox trot.”
“Tell you what you do. Find yourself a girl from Sacramento.They are real square up there. Bet she’ll do a nice slow one with ya”
“But how do I know if a girl is from Sacramento?”
“Probably one of those wallflowers sitting over there…”
He approached one girl and she said she was from Los Angeles.Like a little boy he asked several until he found one from “up Sacramento way,” and what started out to be a joke, turned out just right for Dr. Brugh’s son. They danced every dance.
Someone said, “This is the first time I ever saw a couple doing a fox trot when the orchestra was playing boogie-woogie.”
Taylor said in later years that he didn’t “feel” popular in college because he wasn’t “one of the gang” but thought his popularity—though not outstanding—was due to the fact that he went “smudging” with the other boys toearn extra money.

“The citrus growers burned smudge pots to keep the frost from nipping the fruittrees. It paid fifty cents an hour and the college allowed the growers to call out the guys during the night if necessary, If the cold was bone chilling and help was scarce, it might have even paid a dollar an hour.
“We’d shiver out of those warm blankets, put our oldest clothes on and ride up the baselin-e road into a special wind. It could freeze you down to the warmest part of your body and you’d shake for days afterwards thinking about it. The wind came off “Old Baldy,” and when we got to the fields we felt lucky. We’d go around with a torch made out of a piece ofburlap, dip it in oil and light up the pots.
“The smoke penetrated our eyes, lungs and every pore. Our nostrils and ears and lips and hair were filled with that sticky greasy soot and it was almost impossible to wash out.
“There would be times when all we got was an hour’s sleep before making a seven-thirty class. I was the luckiest guy in the world—just to be working.”